


Buried in Hallowed Ground

by androktasia



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen, a story about stories, aggressively northern, doncaster, everything is shit but in a good way, graham being worried about the doctor hurting herself, jack just being a SIMP for all versions of the doctor, the doctor pushing away any attempts at intimacy from her friends, yaz being annoyed at ryan for breaking the law
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-16
Updated: 2020-09-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:16:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26493988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/androktasia/pseuds/androktasia
Summary: There’s a dangerous beast lurking at the heart of Doncaster town. And no - it’s not the Council.--Fifteen minutes later they were all sitting together on the kerb outside the station.“I cannot believe,” the Doctor said scornfully, “that I am in a town where the only thing they do is build trains, but I have to get arail replacement bus servicebecause ofindustrial action.This is just typical.”Ryan shrugged. “Northern Rail.”
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor & Jack Harkness, Thirteenth Doctor & Yasmin Khan & Graham O'Brien & Ryan Sinclair
Comments: 47
Kudos: 70





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So this has been my quarantine fic. It has been nine months since I’ve been home. Can you feel the longing??
> 
> I started writing this in April but I got too sad and lonely, so it languished on my Google Drive for five months. Then I picked it up last week and just finished the thing. Because I started writing it in April, I had just finished watching Torchwood and was feeling a lot of Jack Harkness feelings – which is why he’s in it. There’s no explanation! Feel free to imagine your own.
> 
> I have to give huge thanks to my betas – Frey, who you can find on [AO3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gremlin_of_Space) and [tumblr](http://v4n1r.tumblr.com/), and Apnightwing14 who is here on [AO3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Apnightwing14).

“Here we are!” the Doctor said, flinging open the doors to the TARDIS. “April 2021 – mid-afternoon, cloudy, chance of rain. Definitely Sheffield this time.” Squinting around, she added, “I think.” She looked back as the others stepped out after her, grinning at them. “Told you we’d get here in the end!”

Ryan pushed past, making a beeline towards a bench where he flopped down heavily on his back and closed his eyes. “Eventually, yeah. Remind me never to go back to the ninth, eleventh or fourteenth centuries again – I’m proper knackered.”

“Rude!” said the Doctor, affronted. “I show you all the fun stuff. We got to see Conisbrough Castle when it was brand new!” 

Yaz snorted incredulously. “Yeah, and the king’s soldiers were going to have Jack and Ryan killed for conspiring with the local lord –”

“Earl,” Ryan corrected.

“And I’d probably prefer ‘consorting’, or possibly ‘cavorting’ –” Jack piped in.

“– And me and Graham were left with his wife trying to act like we knew anything about fourteenth century textile manufacturing. I _failed_ Textiles GCSE.”

“And I ain’t never touched a needle in my life,” Graham said.

“Whatever, you lot!” said the Doctor. “Yaz, Graham, sorry I threw you in the deep end, but honestly, sewing is just putting a needle in and out of a piece of cloth. Ryan, Jack, be fair; that executioner was nowhere near you, _and_ he had a rubbish axe – it would have taken ages to kill you.” She beamed hopefully at them all. “Got you out anyway, didn’t I?” 

“Thank God,” Jack said. “I don’t know if my head would reattach, or if I’d just grow a new one, and I am _not_ eager to find out.”

No, not a pleasant thought. And now everyone was uncomfortable, the Doctor knew – the energy of the group had changed. She tried desperately to think of some way to change the subject, but she also knew she was useless at social situations, and so twisted her hands together, awkward and embarrassed. 

“Who knew marital problems could get so violent, anyway?” Yaz said after a momentary silence. _Yes! Excellent. Good work, Yaz_ , the Doctor thought. “I mean, I thought my auntie Priya’s divorce was bad. Three kids and two dogs. Fought it in the courts for ages, and admittedly there was a minor scuffle in a car park but, nowhere near that scale.”

“Er, Doc,” Graham tried to cut in, looking around where they’d landed.

“I could tell you a thing or two about nasty divorces,” the Doctor told Yaz conspiringly, leaning in. “Did I ever tell you I was married to Marilyn Monroe? Complete accident – this is back when I was a man – got an invite to an Hollywood party with a couple of me mates, and was being my usual charming self –”

Yaz flicked her eyes over to Jack, who was now trying to suppress a smile. 

“Oi!” the Doctor shoved her arm reproachingly. “As I were saying, we were having a great time but I definitely had too many of those little glasses of champagne, and when _I_ thought she said, ‘Won’t you call me Marilyn?’, I were like, ‘yeah, of course.’ Turns out what she _actually_ said was ‘Why don’t you come and marry me?’ and by the time I figured it out I felt too awkward to say anything so I just went along with it.” 

Jack slung an arm over her shoulders. He was very warm, and pleasantly heavy, so she allowed it. “That’s nothing. Let me tell you about the time I met the daughter of the Aeolian ambassador to the United Planets Association, she was a _hoot_ , and very good with her tongues –”

“Not to be rude,” Graham interrupted again, “but this ain’t Sheffield, Doc.”

“Tongues, plural?” Yaz squirmed, and Jack winked at her.

The Doctor scoffed at Graham. “You what? Yeah it is. I checked all the scanners!” She sniffed in, getting a faint tang of metal. That was classic Sheffield steel. Right? 

From his position on the bench, Ryan was eyeing the skyline and groaned. “I hadn’t even noticed. You’re alright, Doctor, we’re not that not far off. Look, there’s the Minster.” He sat up and pointed at the tower pointing out from behind some buildings. “This is Donny. Only a couple of miles out.”

The Doctor twisted out of Jack’s embrace and scowled at him, while he tried to make himself look very innocent. “Your fault! Again! The TARDIS doesn’t like you. It’s throwing my _usually excellent_ nav skills off.” There were some very rude sniggers from all parties that she decided to ignore, lest she let her feelings get hurt. 

Jack turned his head to Yaz. “Donny?” 

Graham looked at him. “Come on mate. Donny – Doncaster. Didn’t you live in England for like, a hundred and fifty years?”

His eyebrows climbed his face. “I lived in Wales, not England – they’d have your head for that in Cardiff.”

“Too soon,” muttered Ryan, rubbing his throat.

Graham’s eyes crinkled as he gave a cheeky grin. “Cardiff’s like, the England of Wales though, right?” 

“Please never go to Wales,” said Jack.

The Doctor peered up at the TARDIS, laying a hand gently on the door. “I can try and hop us over, staying in this timeline. Shouldn’t be _too_ difficult…”

Shooting up, Ryan grabbed her arm and glared at everyone. “No. We’ll get the train. It only takes half an hour. I’m not ending up in some random century with people trying to lop my head off again.”

Under her breath, the Doctor muttered, “Where’s your sense of adventure?” but she gamely locked the TARDIS and followed the others as Yaz and Ryan started to lead them to the train station.

“I’ll text my parents and let them know we’re coming round,” Yaz said. “Dad’ll probably cook us tea.”

“Not pakora!” the Doctor said. To Jack, she added, “It’s terrible.”

Yaz laughed as she started typing. “I’ll let him know.”

They walked for a bit down a vaguely dirty road with blocks of flats on either side. “I don’t think I’ve ever been to Doncaster before,” the Doctor commented, linking arms with Jack and Graham and trying to swing herself between them. “Rings a bell though. Is it nice?”

Ryan turned round and started walking backwards. “It’s alright for shops, but there’s not much else going on really,” he said. “I think they do horse racing in summer but I’ve never gone. Not really my thing.” He tripped and grabbed onto Yaz’s arm to steady himself.

“Mm,” the Doctor said, non-committal. “But like, what do they do? It smells Sheffield-y. Something to do with metal?” She jumped over a crack in the pavement.

Graham was trying to shake off her grip, unsuccessfully. “Well, as with most places round here, they had the coal mines; not really done much of that since the eighties, though. And I think they used to build trains, too.”

“Oh, of course!” the Doctor said, slapping her forehead. Graham darted away while she was distracted. “That’s where I know it from. _The Flying Scotsman_ was built here in the twenties. Fastest steam locomotive in the world at the time. _Brilliant_ engineering – and still running! Edinburgh to London.” 

Her friends looked at her in disbelief. “What?”

Ryan said, “You’ve never been to Doncaster, but you’ve got all that info about the flying whatever just memorised? What – in case you need it?”

“I’ve done a bit of trainspotting in my time, yeah,” she said defensively. 

“How do you have space in your head?”

“I do a lot of sudokus,” she told him. “Good for the brain.”

*

Fifteen minutes later they were all sitting together on the kerb outside the station.

“I cannot believe,” the Doctor said scornfully, “that I am in a town where the only thing they do is build trains, but I have to get a _rail replacement bus service_ because of _industrial action_. This is just typical.” 

Ryan shrugged. “Northern Rail.” 

She scowled. “I’ve got stuff to do. Yaz’s dad is making tea. I _need_ to get to Sheffield.”

“So we’ll get the bus, then,” Graham said.

“Or,” she suggested hopefully, “we could nip back to the TARDIS, quick as you like, and we’ll be there in minutes.”

He huffed. “You got something against getting the bus, Doc?”

Oh cripes, now she’d dropped herself in it. “Not at all!” she hurried to say. “Just trying to save us some time.” 

“No,” Ryan said. “It hardly saves time when we get stuck for weeks in 19th century China in the middle of the Second Opium War and have to _negotiate for our lives –_ ”

“That was one time! And I made it up to you ages ago. I’m telling you, it’s Jack, the TARDIS doesn’t like Jack. It’s like she’s allergic to him or something.”

“That is not nice!” Yaz exclaimed. “You’re being rude again, Doctor.”

“Am I? Is that rude? Sorry.” Jack waved her off genially. Standing, she held her hand out to him and hauled him up. The others clambered up to their feet as well. “Come on then, let’s get the bus.” She jammed her hands in her pockets and looked around. “Where are we going?”

“Should be just down the road, on the right.” Ryan said.

“Lead the way!”

They headed off, Ryan and Yaz heading the group again, taking them underneath a large thunderous tunnel and out to a great green expanse. The Doctor skipped over a pothole or two, and commented, “These feel like they could be dangerous. If you were like, old. I mean, I’m old. But if you were frail.”

Graham eyed her beadily. “Hope that’s not a dig.”

“Doncaster Council are famously shite,” Yaz told her. “Everything wrong with this town boils down to a lack of investment in the local area, really.”

“Why would it be a dig?” the Doctor said seriously. “You’re not old, or frail.”

He smiled at her. “Good answer.”

“What’s with all the bunting?” Jack asked, gesturing up the street. Draped around the doors of shops and in the windows of a number of the flats above hung little white flags with red crosses.

Graham patted him on the back. “It’s the English flag, mate. Again, you lived here how long?”

“In _Wales_ ,” Jack stressed.

“There’s probably a football match on.” Yaz said. “People only pull out the flags for the footie.”

Ryan frowned. “In 2021? There’s no World Cup in 2021. Wait – Doctor, please tell me you got the year right. I do not want to explain to my mates why I’ve been gone for over a year with no contact, _again_. They think I’m a right flake, it’s getting awkward.”

“Relax, you lot!” The Doctor darted off to the right, grabbing a copy of the _Guardian_ from a newspaper stand. “23rd of April, 2021,” she called out, waving it above her head. “Told you! Have a bit of faith.”

“Are you going to buy that?” the man running the shop asked her testily.

Yaz checked her phone. “Oh, it’s St George’s Day.”

“Can’t,” the Doctor apologised, putting the paper back on the stand and pulling the pockets of her coat out. “No money. Sorry!” She flashed him a quick grin and dashed back over to her friends.

“Why d’you have that saved in your Calendar?” Ryan asked Yaz curiously.

“I don’t, it comes pre-loaded with the app,” she said, tucking her phone away. 

“Take it you guys don’t go in for a little bit of flag waving nationalism, then?” Jack asked.

Graham snorted. “Course not. We’re not Americans.” 

“English nationalism’s a bit like, racist and Brexit-y,” Ryan added, gesturing meaningfully between himself and Yaz. “Not really our thing.” 

“I’m not American, I’m from the future,” Jack protested.

Graham groaned. “Don’t tell me everyone in the future sounds American? I honestly couldn’t cope.”

“I don’t think America even exists in the future,” Jack reassured him.

They continued on, and the Doctor noticed a savoury aroma wafting through the street from a large Victorian building at the end of the road, domed at the top, cute little round windows. They approached it, and she took an appreciative whiff. 

“Oh my god, that smells aces.” Ryan said. “Let’s pop into the market and get something to eat.” 

“Ryan!” Yaz objected. “My dad’s cooking.”

“Right,” he said, turning to her and spreading his arms. “But we’re gonna be on the bus for an hour at the least, and literally all I’ve had for the past three weeks is gruel. I’m getting samosas.” He headed inside without waiting for agreement, and exchanging looks, the four of them followed after him.

While the others headed off to the food stalls, the Doctor ambled round the rest of the market, Jack plodding after her. 

“I love the twenty-first century,” she murmured to him. “It’s one of my favourites. Look at all this stuff!” She gestured to a second-hand book stall, where the proprietor was happily ignoring everyone flipping through the waist-high pile of books in front of her to read a well-thumbed copy of _Fifty Shades of Grey_. 

Jack grinned at her, slightly bemused. “What are you on about?” He glanced around. “It’s tat, it’s all tat.”

“Nah, it’s so idiosyncratic,” the Doctor said. “You don’t get this sort of stuff in a hundred years’ time. They go all digital. Rubbish.” She picked up a book gently, rubbing her index finger down the heavily creased spine. “You can feel the weight of things, in objects. The history of it. Someone loved this book, read it over and over.” She turned over the front page and showed it to him. Inscribed on the back of the cover, someone had written _To Victor, with love. Jeremy. 1989._

“Never change, Doctor,” Jack said, holding her eyes, face heavy with sentiment.

The others were heading back, and Ryan handed them both paper bags stained slightly with grease. “My treat,” he told them. “For saving my life. Again.” 

The Doctor grabbed her bag eagerly and stuffed the steaming package of lightly spiced, pastry-wrapped vegetables in her mouth. “Don’t worry about it,” she said, speaking through her food. “Can’t go about with one of my mates killed.” Jack thanked Ryan as well, taking a more moderate bite.

“We gonna head?” Yaz asked. 

“Eh, we can mosey round a bit, right lads?” said the Doctor. “Drink in the ambiance?”

“Some ambiance,” Yaz muttered, but gamely traipsed along as they wandered around the market.

They were eyeing some bric-a-brac, the Doctor making comments here and there (“Alien… alien… human, but weird –”) when all of a sudden the ground rumbled beneath their feet. The earth lurched violently and the Doctor grabbed onto Ryan and Jack’s arms, trying to steady herself though her stomach protested the sudden movement, churning. Yaz was sent sprawling to the ground, throwing her arms over her head as little bottles of nail polish rained down on her. 

“Yaz!” the Doctor cried, but it didn’t seem like she could hear her – people were screaming, and parts of the ceiling had begun to crack and crumble. The glass in the windows she thought were cute earlier shattered, raining down on them all – a part of her brain that wasn’t really processing what was happening thought, _That’s a shame_ , while the rest of her brain screamed at that bit to sort its priorities out.

“Take cover!” Jack yelled in her ear, dragging her and Ryan beneath a stall. Yaz had backed herself under a table as well. She couldn’t see Graham, and poked her head out turning it wildly from side to side trying to spot him, until a bit of ceiling landed inches away from her face and Jack pulled her back in, holding tightly onto her wrist. 

“If you can’t see him, you can’t help him,” he whispered, his hot breath warming her cheek. “Don’t get hurt for no reason.”

She knew he was right, but her blood was rushing and her breath was coming hard and fast and all she could feel was a burning concoction of anxiety and terror curdling in her gut. 

Ahead of them, the ground seemed to be crumpling, ripples shaking the tiles loose from the floor. A hole opened up about twenty feet away from them, caving in almost violently and setting off a whole new wave of screaming as people scrambled away. Someone let out a piercing shriek, and the Doctor peaked out again to see a woman getting dragged down into the sinkhole, her face screwed up and red and crying as she tried futilely to cling to the floor tiles with her fingertips, scrambling, desperate, until she finally disappeared. 

Almost as quickly as it started, the quake seemed to fade away, until there were only a few gentle tremors, and then, finally, nothing. Jack loosened his grip on her wrist and said with a soft voice, “Sorry.” She looked down and saw a handprint of red bruises rising through her skin.

“It’s okay,” she said.

They crawled out together, and the Doctor swung round to get a visual of everyone, hearts beating quadruple time. A quick look showed Ryan and Yaz with a few scrapes, and – there he was – Graham was bleeding slightly from the temple, but aside from that no one seemed to be injured too badly. She rushed over to him. 

“Are you all alright?” she demanded.

“Ugh,” Ryan said from behind her, “I feel like I’m going to be sick.”

“Stay sat down,” she told him, flapping over Graham who batted away her hands as she turned his head either way to peer at it. 

“I’m fine, Doc.”

“Follow my finger,” she said, moving it in front of his face slowly. He seemed to be tracking fine, but she sonicked him anyway. No concussion, no broken bones. She dragged a handkerchief out of her coat pocket and dabbed the blood away from his face. “Yeah, you’ll be okay. Just sit down for a sec. Jack, can you see if there’s anyone seriously hurt?”

Jack was leaning over a man prone on the ground, and gave her a short nod, checking him over.

“What _was_ that thing?” a man grunted from behind them.

She whipped her head round. “What thing?” She scrambled over to where he was propped up against a pillar and checked him over quickly as well. “I’m a doctor,” she told him quietly, holding his head up and sonicking. 

Yaz was right behind her, grabbing a notebook and pen out of her back pocket. “PC Khan, Hallamshire Police. What did you see?” 

He looked her up and down, raising an eyebrow. “You don’t look like police, love.”

“It’s my day off,” Yaz said, firmly. “What did you see?”

“There was like, a crocodile or something, in the ground,” he said. “It bit that poor woman’s leg and dragged her down with it.”

“No concussion,” the Doctor said. “Say aaaah.”

“Aaaaaah.”

“Yep, mouth still working. Might want to see your GP about your tonsils though.”

“What?”

“You finding it difficult to swallow?” 

He looked at her, nonplussed. “Well, yeah, a bit?”

She nodded. “Tonsillitis. Mild case. No pressing injuries though. You said crocodile, why did you say crocodile?”

He blustered. “I dunno. Maybe not a crocodile, but a big fucking lizard. I saw it, it grabbed her leg…” He looked into the distance with a vacant stare. “Oh god… it’s probably eating her…”

The Doctor pressed her hands to his face and passed a quick psychic pulse through his head to send him to sleep. Looking up at Yaz she murmured, “No point letting him panic.”

“Yeah,” Yaz said quietly. She held out her hand and pulled the Doctor to her feet. “‘Big fucking lizard’.”

“Yep.” Jamming her hands in her coat pocket, the Doctor gave her a quick joyless smile and set off back to the others. “Looks like we’re going to miss our bus, sorry gang. There’s some reptile moving about underneath the town, and we’re going to investigate. Whatever it is took that woman alive. We need to find her.”

Ryan groaned. “Okay. But I’m going to need five minutes.” He pulled a slightly squashed paper bag out of his pocket.

“I cannot believe you can eat right now,” Graham said, eyebrows raised. “Weren’t you on the verge of chucking up a second ago?”

“I’m not accepting judgement at this moment in time,” Ryan mumbled round a mouthful of samosa.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) [Conisbrough Castle](https://www.yorkshire.com/media/15403/conisborugh-castle-final.jpg): a medieval castle built in the 11th century by the Warennes after the Norman Conquest. It has a magnificent hexagonal keep, and is a unique treasure of England, according to their own website. I used to drive past it on the way to school.  
> 2) Nasty divorce: In 1306, the eighth Earl of Warenne married Joan of Bar in what would later be widely regarded as a bad move. Possibly ameliorated by the fact that she was ten years old to his nineteen when they got hitched, they didn’t get on. I imagine they didn’t have much in common. Relations broke down and he tried to divorce her, but the courts did not grant his appeal. For this, Warenne blamed the Earl of Lancaster, and his entirely reasonable reaction to this was to kidnap Lancaster’s own wife. Lancaster’s rebuttal was to seize Conisbrough Castle. After a brief skirmish (physical violence, verbal abuse – that kind of thing) the king stepped in and told Warenne he was well out of line, and that the castle belonged to Lancaster henceforth.  
> 3) [Doncaster Minster](https://www.doncasterminster.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/IMG_6105_2.jpg): Just a beautiful building.  
> 4) Northern Rail being shit: [it’s not just me!](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/the-northerner/2014/sep/07/helen-pidd-i-hate-northern-rail)  
> 5) Doncaster Council being shit: [it’s not just me!](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2010/apr/19/doncaster-council-failing-and-dysfunctional)  
> 6) [Doncaster corn exchange](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/aV0qvzht99HeHQoYVoTFy2Z5Qc1wBz_XmrcVlgLXh666dDGgPLo4BdG9-RV3MLGIQYwWJX98eJLpexbk_F20_kY47xhsQc5NX2EYWlR0YNqpWkZo0kyImuqytmPew0FZr5mDk7P0eNsComc54SqW1qjmOEpw-Prfp_UblSE_qu70pUHJL2hm-dSw_jU2Rlm_pw0mmuuMtiCKcPOoEf5hcPRMsMq6l7LF64F8): (the marketplace that gets destroyed)
> 
> Coming at you from the South Yorkshire Tourist Board, apparently (haha, this would get me fired, I'm sure). 
> 
> No, I love my horrible grotty town, even though it’s shit. I hope that comes through!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think this is my favourite part of this whole story. It's _very_ self-indulgent. But that's why we write fanfiction, bebe.

The Doctor sat between Yaz and Jack, her shoulders pressed against theirs. Graham and Ryan were opposite them, and they were making a game plan.

“What do we think we know?” she said. “What are the facts?”

“There was an earthquake,” Ryan mumbled. 

“Was the earthquake just an earthquake?” Yaz asked. “Or, whatever the creature was, did it somehow cause it to happen?”

“Or,” Graham said, “was it a real earthquake, and the creature took advantage of it to grab some food?”

The Doctor nodded. “Not an impossible scenario.”

Jack frowned. “But likely?”

“I wouldn’t say so, no,” she said. “I’m wondering…” 

“What’s the creature? Do you know?” Ryan asked. “Have you ever seen anything like it before?”

She gave a short bark of laughter. “I haven’t even seen it now! But this whole thing does ring a bell…” she trailed off. “I mean, it was years ago, but – well, years ago for me. In terms of the Earth, it was… goodness, last year? Wow.” She shook her head. “It was in – Wales, actually,” and shot a look at Jack. “They were mining into the ground looking for minerals, and they bumped into a settlement of Silurians who didn’t appreciate their home being invaded by a giant drill.”

“Fair enough, really,” Graham said.

“Silurians?” asked Yaz.

“Reptile people from before the dawn of mankind.”

“Right.”

“Anyway,” she carried on, “you said that they’ve _stopped_ mining in Doncaster now, didn’t you? So I don’t know why they’d be taking people again.”

Yaz swung her head round. “Taking people? What did they do to them?”

The Doctor sighed. “I think there was one doctor who was doing experiments on them. But it didn’t end well. Someone died.” She frowned, rubbing her forehead with a rough hand. “I don’t think this is the same thing though. The Silurians don’t attack without provocation.”

“Could it be a splinter group?” Jack asked.

“Yes, I suppose so,” she said. “But it’s not just that, is it? There’s something weird going on in this town. I noticed it on the way in – there’s _so_ many potholes. The earth is literally crumbling beneath our feet. That’s not – I don’t think it’s the same thing.”

Yaz had been scribbling on her notepad throughout the conversation. “Like I said though, Doncaster Council are absolutely awful, everyone knows that. The potholes could just be negligence on their part – unrelated.”

“Right,” said the Doctor, “they haven’t fixed them… but something had to cause them in the first place, right?”

Yaz stopped writing and looked up, stricken. “Right.”

“I think,” the Doctor said, “that we should divvy ourselves up and try to find out more about when this started.”

“I can go to the bus station,” Graham said. “Canvas the drivers, see if they can tell us when the roads started getting real bad. I used to know a few people whose shifts took them 'round this way.”

The Doctor nodded. “That’s a good idea. And Yaz, Ryan, if you two could investigate the local area, see if you can find the epicentre, where the roads have the worst damage.” She looked at Jack. “You and I are the most durable.”

“We’re going into the hole, aren’t we?” he said, cheek dimpling.

She grimaced apologetically. “We’re going into the hole.”

“Be careful,” Yaz said.

Jack stood, offering her his hand and pulling her up. She checked the others. “You three’ll be okay?” 

“Yeah, we’ll be reyt,” Ryan said, standing as well, brushing off his clothes. 

In the distance, the Doctor heard a quiet wailing of a police siren; the noise gradually becoming louder as it got closer to the market. “Took their time,” she commented.

“Better get down there quick, before they cordon it off,” Yaz warned. 

The Doctor nodded, and she and Jack walked over to the sinkhole, staring down into its black depths. The Doctor chucked a pebble down, listening to its landing. She noted the milliseconds before she heard a clatter of rock hitting ground. 

“About ten feet, I think,” she said. “Ready?”

He met her eyes. “Ready.”

A quick glance round – no one was watching them – and the Doctor jumped into the darkness. She landed with a crack of her boots hitting the ground and her knees absorbed the shock as she stumbled. _Oh, that’s going to hurt later,_ she thought. 

Getting to her feet, she rooted around in her pockets for the little torch she remembered putting in there after _that_ little incident in the Paris catacombs (the sonic screwdriver gives off light, so they were fine, but it doesn’t half make a racket and Graham had moaned about it the entire time they were down there, and then for a bit longer after). Finding it, she flicked it on and shone it in Jack’s face as he dropped down next to her. 

“Shall we?” he said, with a charming grin and she smiled back at him.

“Aye, captain.”

She turned the torch down the tunnel, and they set off. The way was steep and narrow, heading down deep into the Earth. Jack had to crouch and duck his head to avoid bashing it on the ceiling – he was some measure taller than her now, she thought morosely. She swung the light along the walls, running a finger along the edge of one. It came back black.

She licked it.

“Eugh,” Jack said.

“Ash,” she told him. She took the torch closer still, pausing for a moment – it looked like the ground had been burnt through. She frowned and turned the torch to shine it in Jack’s face. “Quite warm, isn’t it?” 

He winced, covering his eyes. “I had noticed that, yes.”

“And getting warmer.” She peered down the tunnel, squinting, but it was too dark, too narrow. 

Jack hummed in agreement, and took off his greatcoat and slung it over his arm. She copied him. “Keep going?”

“Yeah.”

They walked on, down and down, descending further into the pit until it got so steep that the Doctor slid a few metres down before managing to regain her footing – mildly terrifying. 

“You know,” Jack said after a while, “I think this is the first time we’ve been alone together since – the end of the universe.”

The Doctor’s mouth twisted. “Yeah,” she said, and turned her head to look at him, careful eyes roaming his handsome face, shiny with the heat. There were smile lines, of course, and faint crow’s feet told her of a lifetime of laughter. 

But there was something else.

He looked tired, and sad, the set of his mouth heavy, weighing down on his features.

“What happened to you, Jack?” she said. “I came by Cardiff a couple of years ago to refuel and Torchwood was just... gone.” His eyes shuttered. “I sneaked into UNIT and checked their records while they were all asleep, but there was nothing there. It was like you’d been wiped out.” She paused. “Like you’d never existed.” 

Jack said nothing. She swung the torch back around to peer at him again. “You even look older,” she told him, changing track. She could barely bear to ask, but – “How long’s it been for you since we last saw each other?”

He didn’t look at her, instead staring down into the tunnel. “Oh,” he said, voice cracking. “About a thousand years, probably. Difficult to say when you travel in time. Nothing to keep track against except your own memory.” 

Wasn’t that the truth. The Doctor breathed out through her nose, slowly. “Yeah,” she said. “I just make it up these days. Say a number slightly higher than last time and hope it’s vaguely accurate.”

“For you –” he paused. “Do you find, as you get older, that time seems to go faster? I stayed a year on Betelgeuse Seven, and it just felt like nothing. It slips through my fingers like oil.” He ran the back of his sleeve over his forehead, wiping it dry. “No, that’s not right. The in between times, when I’m not fighting people or…” he cut himself off, looking at her ruefully. 

“Loving them?” she said with a smile.

“Right. Those times last. But everything else is like air. I can’t hold onto it.”

She turned her head away from him, unable to look anymore. “Why do you think I live the life I do?” she said. “I go on adventures because the alternative is too –” she bit her tongue. _Bleak_ was her thought but she didn’t want to say that. She wiped away a trickle of sweat from her temple, pushing her hair out of her face.

They had so much to say to each other, she thought. There was so much that had gone unsaid, the whole time they’d known each other. And he looked so weary, now, and he’d been so alone, and grief had lain such a heavy burden on him.

“I’m sorry, Jack,” she said quietly, “for leaving you behind. So many times.” She let out a huff of breath, and stilted, tried to explain. “Death isn’t the same, for me and you. Every time I regenerate, the old version of myself really does die. I’m reborn again with all the same memories, but a different perspective. But you’ll stay the same forever – always the same Captain Jack Harkness. And there are things that I did in my old lives, ways that I acted, that shame me now.” She turned to him and looked up at his handsome face. “I left you behind, before, because I was dying. But the reason I didn’t come back, after… I was. Revolted.”

“Gee, thanks,” Jack said dryly.

“No, I’m not… let me finish. I think I said to you, when we met each other again, that you were _wrong_. But that’s not – not really what I meant. I was revolted at _myself,_ for creating you. I knew that what I had done to you was wrong, and I couldn’t bear to look at you, because it reminded me of what I’d done to you.” She sighed. “I sometimes wonder what possesses me, to take people with me – humans – when I’m travelling. I show them all the wonders of the universe, and in return I destroy them. I destroyed you.”

“No,” Jack said. “You’re glorious. You shine like the sun.”

She took in a sharp breath and turned her head away. “A sun that burns people to death.” 

“But I’m not dead,” he said, with a toothy smile. “It’s not possible to destroy me.” He looked back at her for a long moment. “You know, I got blown up. I had a bomb implanted in my chest and it went off and destroyed the Torchwood base, and _still,_ my body regrew itself from the scraps.” 

The Doctor swallowed, but the lump in her throat didn’t clear. She looked back at him now, her eyebrows creasing together. “What was that like?”

He clenched his jaw. “Hell on earth.” Stopping suddenly, he touched her hand and turned to meet her gaze. “What would it take to destroy me, Doctor? Completely and utterly? Because I’ve thought about taking a nosedive into the nearest star, but I am so desperately afraid that it wouldn’t work. What if I can survive even that?”

Oh. She took a deep breath. “There’s a reason I don’t mix with immortals much,” she said, fixing her eyes on the side of his cheek. “We’re too big. We last too long.”

“Do you think I could ever die?” he said, more direct now.

“Oh Jack,” she said, her stomach curdling. “What would the universe be without you in it?”

He let out a long sigh, and she knew what he had taken from that. But what other answer could she give?

It was blisteringly hot now, and only getting hotter, and it stank of burning. The Doctor was so wet with sweat that it was dripping off her face, and she would wipe herself off with her sleeve, but be drenched again only a moment later.

“You didn’t make me, anyway,” Jack said. “That was Rose.”

An old ache burned in her chest. “Rose did it because of me,” she said softly. “It’s the same thing.”

“You know,” he said, “I don’t regret the life I’ve had. And I don’t – blame you, or her for what you did. I had so many beautiful things in my life because of it.” He took in a laboured breath. “But they just keep ending, and I just keep going.”

The Doctor scuffed her feet on the ground and twisted her slippy hands together. 

“How do you bear it?” he asked her, and his voice was hoarse, and his shoulders were hunched over like the weight of eternity was bearing down on him.

“There’s no trick,” she murmured, “no secret. You bear it because you have to. You keep going because you have no other choice. And you take the people you’ve lost, and you plant them deep in your chest, and you remember them, and you live, and you hope – desperately – that what flowers is something beautiful.”

“That’s why you do what you do,” Jack said.

She nodded. Her head was aching from the heat, she could feel the blood pounding in her ears, but she took his hand and looked in his eyes earnestly. “I’ve lived for so long, but mortality was never promised to me. I’m _sorry_ , Jack. I truly am.”

“Help me die,” he said, and he quirked his lip up like he was joking, “and you’re forgiven.”

She smiled sadly at him. “The one thing I could never do.”

He nodded, eyes crinkling up at the corners. “Of course you couldn’t.”

They moved on, in silence now, and the trudging darkness closed in on them, the air hanging around them like curtains. The Doctor shone the torch down the way, searching for a clue, searching for anything to tell them what they were chasing.

“This isn’t like the Silurians, not that I know,” she puffed, trying to suck in air, any air, but it was so thick it was almost choking.

“Something new then?” Jack said, and he was breathing heavily too.

“Something new,” the Doctor said – and – and she felt faint suddenly, and her knees went out from underneath her, and she stumbled forward, lifting her hand in front of her, catching a jut of the rocky wall.

But as her palm touched it, it singed and sizzled and she pulled away with a shout of shock, rocking onto her back, cradling it against her chest. 

“Are you okay?” Jack said urgently, crouching down next to her. 

She pushed herself up with her other arm. “Fine,” she said, taking in a harsh breath. She closed her eyes for a second before admitting, “We might have to turn back.” Jack looked down the passageway, taking the torch and shining it down. But it went on and on and on, and the air danced with the heat. 

“That woman…” he said, and they shared a grim look. 

“We still search for her,” the Doctor said. “But we can’t get through here. Or – I can’t, at least.”

Jack nodded. “We go back. And we find another way.”

*

Walking back to the opening of the sinkhole wasn’t a problem, it turned out, but getting back out of it certainly was.

“We should have foreseen this really,” the Doctor said, putting her hands on her hips, craning her head back and looking up at the hole above them. 

Jack made a wry face. “It’s this shocking lack of caution that keeps me coming back to you, you know.”

The Doctor surveyed the rocky outcrops, wondering if she’d be able to climb up somehow – she was a _bit_ more nimble than normal in this body. She was eyeing a particular stone as a handhold when a policeman poked his head down at them from the hole. A wash of relief came over her as he eyed them both suspiciously. “How’d you two get in ’ere, then?” 

“We jumped!” the Doctor said. His hat fell off his head and whacked her in the face. “Ow.”

“Bollocks,” said the policeman.

Jack picked it up. “If you help us out, we’ll bring this back with us!” he said.

He grumbled, but pushed away from the hole and wandered off. Jack looked at her and sniggered. “Let’s hope he wants his hat back.”

A moment later, he returned with a rope, and after he’d anchored it, she clutched at it with her aching hands and climbed out, screwing up her face as the rope rubbed on her new burns.

“Ta,” she said as she emerged, sitting back with a deep breath. Jack chucked both their coats up, and the police hat, before clambering out himself – much more swift than she had been. 

The policeman shoved his hat back on his head and stood over the two of them, crossing his arms. “Now,” he said, all pompous and officious, “you really do need to explain yourselves. This is a crime scene, you know, you can’t just go wandering about as and when you please.”

The Doctor raised a finger at him and rummaged around in her coat pockets until she found her psychic paper. She flicked it open and shoved it in his face. “We’re with UNIT,” she said. “Unified Intelligence Taskforce. We were investigating this very suspicious earthquake and sinkhole.”

He squinted at it dubiously. “You got here quick, then,” he said. “We were here within ten minutes.”

“Oh, you know,” the Doctor said, “Intelligence sources… and such…” she trailed off.

Jack put his hand on her arm. “We’re just that good,” he said, smiling winningly at him. 

The policeman looked a bit flustered, and flapped his arm at them, walking away.

“Only you, Jack,” the Doctor said, “could use flirting as a weapon.” She stood and found an abandoned stall with some bottled water, and opened one up, chugging it in one go. She chucked one to Jack as she opened another, sipping this one more carefully, looking around at the ruined market hall.

They stood together for a moment, catching their breath. The Doctor finished her second bottle, and took a third, dumping it over her head, sighing in relief at the cold.

“Jesus,” Jack said. 

The water trickled over her face and down her neck, and she squeezed her eyes shut, wiping it dry with her coat. “It feels really good. I was – sticky,” she said.

Jack shrugged, grabbed another bottle and did the same, gasping and shaking himself off. He grinned at her wildly, and she grinned back.

“Let’s find the others then,” she said, and Jack chucked some money behind the till and they left.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) The Silurians and the giant drill: reference to the Eleventh Doctor stories _The Hungry Earth / Cold Blood._  
>  2) The end of the universe: reference to _Utopia_ , obviously. The best Jack and Doctor interaction ever imo, where they actually talk?? about their feelings???? to each other???????? And Jack is very hot and sweaty and… oh, I see what I’ve done here.  
> 3) Betelgeuse Seven: reference to Douglas Adams’ _Hitchhiker’s Guide_ , done out of love and immense respect, not at all because I’m useless at coming up with planet names. Look, if Arthur Dent canonically exists in Doctor Who, then so does everything else in that universe.  
> 4) Torchwood exploding: reference to _Children of Earth_ , which yeah! 10 years on still makes me fucking weep!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Plot's heating up! Hope you enjoy.

They met Graham at the bus station, and saw him long before he saw them. He was resting against a wall eating a sandwich, and had a cup of tea steaming gently next to him. She texted him a quick smiley face as they approached, and felt a spark of delight as he fumbled for his phone. He looked around to find them, hailing them as he spotted them, raising a hand.

“Alright?” he said, eyeing them curiously. “You’re very wet.”

“At least we’re not sticky,” Jack said, looking up at the sky. It was quite overcast, grey and unhappy, and blessedly cool.

The Doctor pulled out her phone again. “I’m going to call the others.”

“Want a cup of tea?” Graham asked them. “Trevor’s in the kitchen, he’d make you one if you wanted.”

“I’m okay, thanks,” Jack said, and the Doctor nodded in agreement.

“Ah! Yaz!” she said. “Where are you guys?”

Yaz’s voice buzzed out of the phone, tinny. _“Oh good, it’s you. We’re in the Minster – you guys should come over here, we need to show you something. Well, you need to talk to someone, and then we’ll show you something.”_ There were muffled voices as Ryan seemed to be arguing with her before she said, _“Just get over here.”_

“On our way!” the Doctor said.

_“Cool – see you in a bit.”_

“Bye!” 

“To the Minster?” Graham asked, tossing back the last bite of his sandwich. The Doctor nodded. “Right, I’ll give this cup back to Trev then,” he said. But as the Doctor put her phone away, he suddenly exclaimed, “Doc! What happened?” 

He was looking at the burns on her hand. She waved him off. “Just got mildly burnt, it’s not a big deal.”

He took her hand in his, running his fingers gently over her palm. She hissed and pulled away, and he looked up at her with kind eyes. “It is a big deal. I’ll get you something to wrap it with.”

He bustled himself away into the kitchenette at the bus station. It was Graham’s domain; where drivers were walking in and out constantly; where he had friends and connections; where he knew everyone and no one and where he always went to help her when she needed it.

“You have good friends,” Jack told her, and she said nothing because some strange emotion was stuck in her throat, making her chest feel so full.

After Graham came out and wrapped her hand in bandages, they walked over to the Minster where Yaz and Ryan were standing outside the front gate.

“Wow,” Ryan said, “you two are really wet.”

“It was raining down there,” Jack told him.

“Right,” Yaz said, “the potholes are really bad round here, I’m sure you’ve noticed – we followed the worst of it into the church. We think this is the heart of it, and we’ve got something to show you, but – what did you guys find out, first?” 

“Okay,” the Doctor said. “Well, we followed the passage as far as we could, but there’s something down there emitting loads of heat, and it got to a point that we couldn’t carry on.” She waved her burnt hand at them.

“I spoke to a few drivers,” Graham said, “and they told me that the roads round here have been getting worse for over a year now, and none of it ever gets fixed.”

The Doctor frowned. “A year? That’s interesting.”

“Something underground that’s really hot,” Ryan said. “It’s not a lava monster, is it?” He groaned. “Oh god, it’s not a creature that lives in the magma at the centre of the earth and we’ve angered it and now it’s picking us off and eating us one by one, is it?” He widened his eyes. “ _Is it_?”

“Er,” the Doctor said, “can’t rule it out.”

“If it is,” he said, warningly, “I’m going on strike.”

“We don’t have a union,” Jack said. “But I ain’t no scab, so I’m with you, buddy.” He held out his fist and twinkled his eyes as Ryan bumped it.

“Shall we go inside?” The Doctor nudged them on and into the grounds. “Find out what’s going on? Save the town?”

They sobered up, and Yaz got out her notepad and pen again.

“Okay, so before we go in, you should know that you’re all going to have to pretend to be police officers,” she said, visibly annoyed. “Because _Ryan_ kept pretending to be police, even though that’s illegal and I was _right there_.” She glared at him.

“So your solution to Ryan breaking the law is to make us all into criminals as well?” the Doctor grinned.

“You’re already a serial breaker and enterer, with that little magic wand of yours,” Yaz said, “you’ll cope.”

*

They walked up to the Minster. It towered over them, a gothic memorial; dark spikes shooting into the sky. The sunlight danced off the stained glass chancel, casting coloured lights on the ground in a kaleidoscopic ballet and the Doctor smiled to herself as she watched it shimmer. She was always most enamoured by human declarations of faith – even though she herself had no Gods. Human faith was so huge, so powerful, that she couldn’t help but be moved.

The vicar stood wringing his hands at the door. In his black suit, the Doctor thought, he looked like a particularly repentant penguin; she amused herself by imagining him waddling up to the pulpit and squawking at everyone. 

“These are your colleagues?” he said in a serious voice as they reached him.

Yaz ground her teeth. “Yes.” 

He eyed the Doctor and Jack. “You’re very… wet.”

“Freak showers,” Jack said.

“Well,” he said, “okay then. Please follow me.” He ushered them all in and led them through to the vestry, shutting the door behind them. 

“You’re here about the graves, I take it?” he said quietly.

“That’s right,” Yaz said, darting a glance at the Doctor and Jack who were still trying to catch up with what they had discovered. “We’re very concerned that you didn’t report that bodies were going missing from the graveyard. It’s a serious issue that affects a lot of families.” 

His eyebrows knitted together in an agonised frown. “We knew that keeping it quiet was the wrong thing to do, but we didn’t know what else we could do,” he said. “How do you tell people that their loved ones’ bodies have gone missing? Especially with the circumstances.”

“You thought there was a serial graverobber in town but you didn’t think that the police ought to know about it?” Graham said hotly.

The Doctor narrowed her eyes. “Circumstances?”

The vicar flicked his eyes between the two of them. “I’ll have to show you, so you can see for yourselves, but the graves – they were destroyed. From below.” He met her eyes. “Something came up from beneath the earth. We thought perhaps… that there were some forces of heaven or hell at work, but we knew that any claims of divine intervention to the authorities would be met with ridicule. When PCs Khan and Sinclair showed up here however, I couldn’t in good conscience keep lying about it.”

“We’re not here to ridicule you,” Yaz said, “we just want to work out what’s happened, and help to make it stop.”

“Did someone threaten you?” Jack asked suddenly. “Did someone tell you to keep it secret?”

The vicar did a double take. “Are you – you’re surely not with the police?” he said. “We don’t get many Americans round here.”

“Military.”

“In Doncaster?”

Jack gave a humourless smile and offered nothing more. After a moment, the vicar shook himself and continued to talk. “It wasn’t – that is to say,” he blustered, “the archdeacon suggested… that perhaps it would be more circumspect to… manage the problem in-house.”

“Classic,” Ryan muttered under his breath.

“It doesn’t matter who, or why it was a secret,” the Doctor said. “What I want to know is – how? People must walk the grounds, they must visit the graves. If they were being destroyed, they would have noticed.”

The vicar was already shaking his head. “Our groundskeeper filled in any holes and new earth before they could be discovered.”

She frowned. “Are there any left the way you found them?”

He cast his eyes down. “Yes,” he admitted.

“Show us,” Jack said, and he gave a firm nod.

“Follow me.” He led them out of the vestry and through the nave, asking as they passed through, “Do you know much about the history of the place?”

“’Fraid not,” the Doctor said. “All I know about Doncaster is trains and horse-riding.”

He sighed. “That’s about standard. But this church is actually really interesting. The original was built centuries ago, but was burnt down in a catastrophic fire in 1853. However,” he said with a slight smile, spreading his arms to encompass the whole church, “within four years it had been rebuilt, and now stands, as you can see, a proud example of the Victorian Gothic architectural style.

“We also have a magnificent organ,” he said, pointing to it.

The Doctor elbowed Jack before he could say anything. 

The vicar led them out into the grounds and to a corner of the graveyard which was partially obscured by trees. There was a grave which was covered in a plastic tarpaulin, and he lifted it carefully, revealing a cracked and caved in memorial stone that fell through to a deep cavity in the earth.

Before the vicar could say anything, the Doctor flopped down onto her stomach, reaching out a sprawling hand to grab a handful of the dirt. She twisted her head round to look up at everyone staring down at her; the vicar had flung his hand over his heart, appalled. “How old was this?” she asked. “How long has it been since it was dug?”

Jack read the year off the stone. “1932.”

“So nearly ninety years.” She picked up a handful of dirt and sprinkled it down. “It wouldn’t be this loosely packed.” She caught a whiff of something… familiar. Ashy. She took a sprinkle of dirt and tasted it carefully. 

“Ew,” Yaz said.

“Ash, again… You said the church was burnt down,” she murmured, drawing her eyebrows together, looking at her bandaged hand. Jack followed her gaze and took a sharp breath in. 

“You think there’s a connection?” Yaz asked. “I mean, it was years ago, but it could still be in the soil, I suppose.”

“It’s fresher than that,” the Doctor said. She turned onto her back, sharing a look with Jack. “It was really hot down there, when we were in the tunnels. I don’t know how, but if it’s related…”

“‘Fresh ash’,” Ryan muttered under his breath, shoving his hands in his pockets.

“Surely you’re not suggesting…” Graham said slowly, “that the same creature that burnt down the church in the 1800s is back again?”

“I don’t know. It might have been a perfectly ordinary fire back then, and we’re making connections out of coincidences.”

“You don’t believe in coincidence,” Jack said.

“If it’s the same creature,” Yaz said, “that means, whatever it was, it must have been there when the church was rebuilt.”

“And is coming up again now,” Graham finished.

Ryan nodded grimly. “Lava monsters.”

“What kind of police officers are you?” the vicar asked in horror, but they ignored him.

“There’s probably no lava monsters,” the Doctor said, and whipped out her phone, flipping back onto her front. “But I am going to text Kate Stewart from UNIT to ask her to look into seismic and tectonic activity underneath the town. And anything else weird.”

“I thought you said UNIT had been dissolved,” Graham said curiously.

“Yeah, apparently so,” the Doctor said, not looking up. She typed _xoxo_ at the end, but then reconsidered and settled on just _x_. One kiss was affectionate, but not effusive, she thought. “But I’m texting her last year.”

“Last y–” Ryan gaped. “Do you have a _Time Phone_? I need one of those!”

She looked up, scrunching her face. “Sorry,” she said. “Technically I’m texting myself to remind me to go back in time to last year and text her then. I don’t usually do it – too much admin – but I think this warrants it.” And _Send_. The text whooshed off.

Yaz frowned. “But then how will she remember to text you now?”

“She won’t!” the Doctor said. “She will have already texted me.” She frowned. “English tenses, so inadequate. Not nearly enough of them. I’ll just go back in my messages… there we go, found it.” She waggled her phone at them before tucking it back into her pocket. “Sorted! Jack, help me up.” 

“Yeah, Jack,” Ryan joked, “put your big strong muscles to use.”

Jack posed and flexed a little, flashing a toothy grin. Ryan stepped back, dazed. 

“Stop flirting and help me up,” the Doctor said, wiggling her hands. Jack gripped them and pulled her to her feet. 

*

The vicar led them inside the clergy house, the Doctor straggling after the group and skimming through Kate’s data. Brilliant woman. She’d requisitioned the research of a geothermal energy plant in Sherwood which had done a survey of the surrounding South Yorkshire area when they were searching for new sources of energy. 

It was a disturbing read. The vicar sat them down in the kitchen and made them all cups of tea, the faint scent wafting over as she finished the report. 

“How long has it been,” she asked the vicar, “since the first grave got destroyed?”

He shrugged uneasily. “I think the first one was around two years ago.”

Graham frowned. “Slightly longer than the potholes then.”

“Yes,” the vicar said, looking up, “the roads have been getting really terrible around here, but that was certainly after the first incident. I wrote a letter to the Council telling them they needed to resurface the roads actually, but they never got back to me.”

“So this says –” the Doctor gestured to her phone – “that there’s been strange readings for about three years, of fluctuating heat patterns under the earth, like nothing on record.”

Yaz checked her notes. “So the theory is, something burnt down the church in…” 

“1853,” the vicar said.

“Right,” said Yaz. “So that’s like, a hundred and seventy years. Then you rebuilt the church. If something was living underneath the site, you would have built the new church on top of it.” 

Graham shook his head. “And it slept for that long? What could live that long?”

The Doctor shared a look with Jack. “Stranger things have happened,” he said lightly.

“Imagine a creature,” the Doctor said, “that’s ancient and strange, and it has hibernated under the Earth for centuries. Imagine it only needs to feed every hundred, two hundred years. It was buried underneath this church, and it woke up and started feeding on the closest thing it could find. When that ran out, it had to go further afield.”

“To the market hall,” Yaz said, nodding.

“Some of these bodies were proper ancient though,” Ryan said. “Wouldn’t they have been like, all bones and dust?”

“We’re just theorising here,” the Doctor reminded him. “You’re assuming it eats meat. But there are many things in this world and others that eat bones – vultures, hyenas…”

“Scavengers,” Yaz said.

“Right.” She turned to the vicar. “Is there anything else you can tell us, any more information you have that can help us find this thing?”

He twisted his hands together, not meeting her gaze. “No.”

The Doctor narrowed her eyes. “You’re lying. What is it? Need I remind you that we’re here with UNIT?”

“The police,” Yaz said, a forced smile on her face.

“The UNIT department of the police,” she corrected.

He covered his face with his hands. “I can’t lie anymore,” he said miserably. “Speak to the curate. The curate saw something you’ll need to know about.”

“Where can we find him?”

“He’ll be in the crypt.”

They left him sat there, surrounded by their half-drunk cups of tea, silent and stunned and shamed by the echoes of his own lies ringing in his ears.

*

The crypt was underground and ancient; far older than the building that rose above it. On the door was a sign that instructed that visitors were not to enter, which the Doctor pointedly ignored (as always), sonicking it open with a quick glance round to check they weren’t being watched. They slipped in, and walked down the stairs.

The Doctor tripped on a chunk of stone, catching herself against the wall. “Ugh,” she said, as she swiped her fingers through a layer of slime. She wiped it off on her coat and fished out her torch again, swinging it around to get her bearings. The place was filthy and crumbling, coated in a thick layer of dust and cobwebs, and the cloying stink of damp coated her tongue. 

The curate was knelt before a stone sarcophagus, praying. He screeched when he saw them, falling back in fear.

“It’s okay,” the Doctor said, “we’re here with the police.” _Not technically a lie,_ she thought.

“What do you want?” he said. “You’re not allowed down here – people aren’t allowed down here.”

“The vicar told us to come,” Yaz said. “We’re here about the creature you saw in the graveyard.”

His eyes widened in shock. “He – he said he would never tell anyone. I didn’t see – it wasn’t real. It wasn’t real.”

The Doctor knelt down in front of him. “We’re not here to judge you, or tell you you made it up,” she said softly. “We just want to know what you saw.”

He met her eyes, hesitating. “I thought… I thought no one would believe me.”

“You’re scared,” she said. “Why?”

“It was a demon.” He said it with such force that she sat back. “I swear on all that’s holy. I saw a demon rise from hell that night.”

“What did it look like?”

“It wrenched its golden head from the world like it was rising from the dead,” he spat. “And its eyes reflected the light like a cat, and it saw me and its stare bore right through my soul. I swear on all that is holy, I saw Lucifer that night.”

“What did it do when it saw you?”

“It breathed out hellfire, up into the sky, and I ran away.” He ducked his head. “The next day, I went back to the site and the grave was destroyed.”

The Doctor laid a hand on his arm. “Thank you,” she said, “for sharing your story.”

“I should have fought it,” he said. “I should have taken to it with holy water but I was afraid.”

“We’re going to find it,” she said. “And we’re going to stop it.”

*

They left the curate praying in the crypt. The Doctor clicked the door shut carefully before turning to the rest of the group.

“Breathed out …fire?” Yaz said.

Jack let out a long breath. “It’s a dragon.”

“It’s probably an alien,” the Doctor disputed.

The others looked at each other. “Nah,” Yaz said. “It’s a dragon.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) Trevor: the bus driver that used to take me to school. Hi Trev, if you’re reading! (He’s not).  
> 2) Fire at Doncaster Minster: [Real, and devastating.](http://www.doncasterminster.co.uk/origin-of-st-georges-church-and-its-importance-to-the-town/)  
> 3) Magnificent organ: [Also real!](https://mander-organs.com/the-schulze-organ-at-doncaster-parish-church/) And devastating _ly beautiful._  
>  4) The graves and the crypt: Okay, so I don’t _know_ (and I can’t find online!) how old the bodies in the graveyard are, because I’m stuck in rubbish London in the middle of a pandemic and can’t just pop along and have a look. Similarly, I don’t _know_ what the medieval crypt looks like, even though I know it exists! So I used some creative licence. I imagine the graves are probably older and the crypt less disgusting but, hey, it’s fanfiction, who cares… (me).  
> 5) Me, coming up with names for original characters: ‘The policeman’, ‘the vicar’, ‘the curate’... good one.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears! I have finished it.

“ _And_ ,” Ryan said, a grin growing slowly on his face, “it’s St George’s Day. It’s St George’s Day and there is a _literal dragon_ under this church.”

Graham raised his eyebrows at him. “Yes.”

“There is a literal _fire-breathing dragon_ under this church, _and_ – oh my god, it’s kidnapped a princess. On St George’s Day!”

“Ryan, she’s just a regular woman,” Yaz said crossly.

“You are not ruining this for me, Yaz. We’re on a quest. We’re off to rescue a princess!” He punched the air with his fist. “Take that, St Patrick! What’ve you got, leprechauns? _Rubbish!_ Stuff it, St Andrew!” He paused for a moment. “Wait, who even is the patron saint of Wales?” he asked Jack.

“St David.”

“And what did he do?”

“Um,” Jack said, drawing his eyebrows together, “I think he made a hill rise out of the ground so people could see him while he was preaching.”

Ryan cupped his hand round his mouth and gave a long, drawn out, “ _Laaame_!”

“You are a child,” Yaz told him. 

“Also, come on,” said Jack. “The Welsh flag literally has a dragon on it.”

“Flag’s just a piece of cloth, mate,” Ryan said smugly. “We’re in Yorkshire, and we have an _actual, real life dragon_ –” 

“Right,” the Doctor cut him off. '“Shall we actually get a shift on? I reckon we need to go to the graveyard and see if we can follow one of the tunnels down to its nest.”

“Lair!” Ryan exclaimed.

Ignoring him, the Doctor continued. “The one Jack and I went down earlier in the market was burning hot, but it was new. If we use one of the old ones, it should be cool enough for us to approach.” 

“And what are we going to do when we find it?” Graham asked.

She pressed her lips together. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “We just need to find this woman, hopefully alive, and get her back. If the creature’s going to keep killing people… I don’t know. We need more information.”

“We slay the dragon,” Ryan said, “obviously. That’s the story.” He was exuberant, revelling in their discovery.

The Doctor fixed her eyes on him. “That’s not what we do.”

He frowned at her. “It’s killing people.”

“No,” she said, “we don’t know that. We’re still hoping to rescue that woman. And everyone else it’s eaten was already dead.”

“If it’s killing people,” he said, more sober now, “we have to stop it.”

“ _I_ _f_.” 

With that, the Doctor turned around and led the way back to the graveyard, the rest of them trailing after her. They gathered around the caved in memorial stone from before, the tarpaulin flapping angrily in the breeze. She sat on the edge, and looked at the others gathered around it. “You don’t have to come. It could be dangerous.”

“Don’t be daft, Doc,” Graham said. “We’re all in.”

“Yeah,” Yaz said. “Following a dragon burrow deep into the depths of Donny? This is so us.”

“Our most heroic venture yet,” Ryan said.

“And we’ll turn back if we can’t go on,” Jack assured her. “Like before.”

“Alright then,” she said. “Let’s go.” she jumped into the grave, dropping through the dirt down a dark, wet and cold slide that slowly leveled out, allowing her to dig her feet into the earth and bring herself to a stop.

She found her torch again and shone it up. “It’s safe!”

The others followed after her, until they were all stood together, staring down the black expanse of the path ahead. 

“Bit cramped,” Graham commented, neck bent at an awkward angle.

“Soz,” the Doctor told him, shooting a grin at Yaz, who was, like her, able to stand straight. “Shouldn’t be so tall.”

“We’ll take that into account next time,” Ryan grumbled. He was completely hunched over, him and Jack the tallest of them all. She stuck her tongue out at him.

“Come on then,” she said, and set off, waving the torch down the tunnel. They were spared the sweltering heat from before, and the Doctor imagined that her previous assumptions held some truth – the creature must either give off so much heat that following in its direct path was unbearable, or it used heat to disturb the tunnels somehow. 

They walked for an age, down and down into the earth, and as it began to get warmer, the Doctor found her thoughts wandering, rather unhelpfully, to Dante’s Divine Comedy. _Abandon hope, all ye who enter here_ , her mind supplied. Maungy bastard, Dante. Never paid for his drinks either. _No one has returned from these depths alive_ , she remembered. He’d completely rejected her advances too – both times she’d met him, to add insult to injury. Male and female bodies. _Through me you pass into eternal pain_. And he would _not_ shut up about Virgil. The Doctor had met Virgil. She knew Virgil. She didn’t need some glum Italian to tell her about the _Aeneid_. 

“Getting quite tight in here,” Yaz said in a low voice.

“And warm,” Jack said. He paused. “There’s a joke in there somewhere.”

“Eh?” the Doctor asked, turning to him.

He looked at her. “‘We’re getting warmer’?”

“Oh, yeah,” she said, swinging back round. “Sorry. Bit distracted.”

It was getting hotter again – not as bad as before, but enough to make her sweat slightly. The air was heavy again, and tasted of the burnt soil surrounding them. Under her feet, the path began to feel more unsteady, and she slipped a couple of times but managed to keep her footing.

Ryan let out a small scream from behind the Doctor, and as she turned, flashing the torch at him, she saw he’d fallen.

“Alright, son?” Graham said, helping him to his feet.

“Yeah,” he muttered, embarrassed. “Sorry.”

But the Doctor was focussed on something else. She pointed the torch at the ground and crouched, shifting dirt out of the way with gentle fingers.

“Oh, God,” Yaz gasped, clapping a hand over her face. The Doctor had uncovered half a skull, poking soil out of an eye socket. She got to her feet. 

“Are these… the bodies from the church?” Graham asked.

“Can’t rule it out,” she murmured, running the light over the rest of the path curving away from them, which was coated in bones. She looked at her friends. “Just. Tread carefully.”

They eased their way around the bend, and finally, they had found the dragon’s lair. The Doctor turned a grim face at the scene in front of her. 

The woman from the market was dead. That much was clear. Her body lay in the middle of the great chamber as a grotesque memorial. The Doctor walked over to her, putting a hand back at the others to stop them following her. She heard retching.

She crouched on her haunches, looking at the woman. Half her face was burnt and charred, skin blackened and flaking. The other side was largely unmarred, and the Doctor saw deep crow’s feet around her open eye and thought about a long life of smiles and laughter, and reached out a heavy hand, cupping her face, closing her eye with her thumb.

Yaz came up next to her. “It didn’t eat her.” She swallowed several times, and the Doctor thought about how young Yaz was, about how she shouldn’t have to see people’s bodies laid out like victims of war. She stood, blocking her view.

“No,” she said, and they turned to the creature, which was curled up sleeping in a gigantic rib cage against the far wall. It was small, relatively speaking – perhaps the length of a small car. There was a cracked open eggshell still visible behind the bones, shattered, but not much bigger than it was. 

Spread across the cavern there were more bodies, older ones, much older. The Doctor saw skeletons with scraps of armour still clinging to the bones, red rectangular shields with golden crosses, and she thought about a legion of Roman soldiers heading into the deep earth and holding up their shields against an onslaught of fire; thought about their screams; their futile deaths. 

She felt too much, she thought, but this was a cavern of death and bones, and its remnants were laid bare for all to see.

“It’s just a baby,” Yaz breathed, looking at the creature, which slept still. She took a step closer, but the Doctor shot out a hand and stopped her. 

“Don’t get too close,” she said lowly. 

“Doctor, what do we do?” Jack called.

She shoved Yaz back to the others. “Don’t –” she stepped towards the creature, taking quiet steps, “don’t follow me.”

“ _Doctor_!” Yaz said, grabbing her hand, and she turned, facing her friend. 

“It’s okay,” she said, with a wild smile. “I’m okay, just – go back to the others, yeah?” 

Yaz looked at her with shining eyes, a mutinous tremble to her lip. “You’ll be okay?”

“I’m thousands of years old, Yaz,” the Doctor said, “you really think I can be got by a measly bit of fire?”

Yaz stared at her for a long moment, but ducked her head and did as she was bid.

The Doctor turned again to the creature, golden and resplendent in its cage of bones. It breathed low rumbles of snores. She trod next to its head, which was as big as her torso, and laid a hand on it.

She gasped.

She fell into its dreams – she saw how it woke up alone, and it was _so cold_ – and her free hand clenched into a claw at the agony of it. 

The others lurched forward, and Jack shouted her name, her but she held up her hand to stop them and kept going. 

“It’s curled up in its mother’s breast,” she rasped. The ribs of the mother's great remains stretched twenty metres above them, and she felt how the creature was _so lonely,_ how it craved the comfort of it’s mother’s warmth.

“She burnt herself,” she whimpered, “to incubate the egg.” 

Jack stepped next to her, and she tried to push him away but he didn’t let her. “More durable, remember?” he said, and she met his eyes. “The mother – it had to die to let the new one live?”

The Doctor nodded, pressing her lips tightly together. She closed her eyes, delving in again. And she felt that utter cold, and saw how it nosed around, blind, until it found something it could burn.

“Oh,” she said softly, “it doesn't feed – it’s not eating them. They’re – they’re fuel. It’s so cold, it’s always so cold.”

Distantly she heard Graham, Ryan and Yaz’s exclamations of horror and turned her head away from them, something huge in her throat, unable to breathe, and she was – 

Dreaming again, and she was _warm_ , and curled around a stone pillar bursting flame up into the sky because she was going to destroy herself, and her child would live, and she was – she was – 

Jack pulled her hand off the dragon’s head. The Doctor was crying, she was so warm, and she remembered, the dragon remembered, it remembered its mother’s heat, her last shining day of burning, her inferno. She had burnt down the old church in the night, lighting up the sky with her final message, and then she had burrowed down into the earth and curled herself around her egg and immolated herself, burning herself up to heat the child. And she was crying, crouched on the ground and Jack was shaking her shoulders gently.

“Doctor, Doctor,” he was saying. 

She looked at him. “It’s just a baby,” she said. “And it’s cold, and it’s not it’s fault that it was born.”

His eyes were dark and savage. “Okay, okay, let’s get – let’s get away from it, okay?” And he pulled her away, beating a quiet retreat to the cover of the tunnel to decide on what to do next. The Doctor wiped her face with rough fingers.

Graham turned to her, speaking softly. “I knew you were mildly psychic but… bloody hell, Doc,” he said.

She shook her head. “No, it was reaching out to me, I wouldn’t have got any of it without it helping me. I think that’s how they communicate… there must have been more at some point, but it’s all alone.” She cut herself off.

“If it doesn’t eat people,” Ryan said, “what does it eat?”

She shook her head again. “I don’t – I don’t know, it just burns and burns, it’s always so cold, it just wants to be warm.”

“It remembers it’s mother dying?”

“It passes along,” she said. “Some kind of resonance. It remembers her last day.” She turned to Yaz and Ryan. “She burnt down the old church.”

“What a bitch,” Yaz said, smiling slightly.

“So what now?” Jack asked.

“It can’t help its nature,” Ryan said slowly. “It – didn’t know what it was doing.”

Graham put his hands in his pockets. “What does it want?” He stuttered slightly. “Does it have to burn… people?”

The Doctor frowned, thinking back. “No,” she said. “It just needs fuel, something that will burn.”

“So if we … move it, it wouldn’t eat anyone anymore?”

She shot her head up. “You have a plan?”

He shook his head. “No, just an idea. There’s a ton of old quarries and coal mines around this area. If it needs fuel… it could live in one of those quite happily I should imagine.”

“Burn to its heart’s content,” the Doctor murmured, looking back at the dragon, it’s golden head nosing into the earth. She felt raw, like the thing had clawed her open and crawled into her heart. “We’re not killing it,” she said harshly, staring at the ground.

“Will it work?” Yaz asked.

“It should do.”

“So we’ll do that then,” she said with a firm look round at everyone. “How do we move it?” The Doctor felt her lips curve up. Always the pragmatist, our Yaz.

“I think I can set it into a trance,” she said, “and we’ll carry it back through to the church.”

“You can do that?” Ryan said.

“Yeah,” she said, “I do it to you guys all the time!” 

Yaz raised an eyebrow. “Right, we’re talking about _that_ when we’re done here.”

The Doctor shot her a fragile smile and walked back to the dragon’s side. She stroked a tender hand over its scaled cheek, which glinted like tiny jewels in the torchlight. Closing her eyes, she sank into its mind again, plastering soothing music over its troubled thoughts, shutting off the door to its turbulent memories, leaving only echoes of warmth and calmness, tucking it away to bed and kissing it gently on both cheeks. 

She opened her eyes again and watched it for a moment, puffing out snorts of smoke from its nose. She gave it a smile and stood up.

“Right,” she said, putting her hands on her hips. “Durables at the front, delicates at the back.”

The others came over and they began to arrange themselves along its body, finding purchase where they could in order to hoist it over their shoulders.

“That had better not stick,” Graham said, hefting up the dragon’s tail. “I ain’t being called a delicate beyond today. Don’t you dare, Doc.” 

“Can’t make any promises,” she said.

*

They carried the dragon out between them, the Doctor taking the front holding its head and neck, running comforting hands over its face when she could. The journey took far longer than it had on the way down, and getting it out into the graveyard proved a nightmare in rope and heft. The vicar lent them his car, and they eventually pulled it out with the sheer force of its engine. 

“We’re going to need to borrow this,” Jack smiled at the vicar, whose wide eyes were fixed on the sleeping dragon sprawled across his grounds. He dangled the car keys.

“Okay,” the vicar mumbled, still unable to tear his eyes away.

“Great,” Jack said. “We’ll have it back to you as soon as we can.” It was dark now, the night having crept up on them while they’d been underground. They hauled the dragon on top of the roof between them, Jack and Ryan shoving up while the Doctor, Graham and Yaz pulled on the ropes from the other side.

“Don’t you have your own car…?” the vicar said, watching them, dazed.

“Police cutbacks,” Yaz said, tugging on a knot. “Don’t have the budget.”

The Doctor frowned up at their work. “How are we going to get through the town without anyone noticing?”

“I wouldn’t worry about it. People don’t give a shit round here,” Ryan said. “Like, they’ll gossip about it, sure, but they’re not gonna report it.”

Graham snatched the keys from Jack and climbed into the driver’s seat. “I know just where we’re going,” he said, running his fingers over the wheel. The Doctor crawled into the middle seat in the back, squashed between Yaz and Ryan, and they drove through the town, streetlights swinging past them, their faces lighting periodically in a yellow glow.

“Oh, where?” the Doctor said after a while. “Where are we going?”

“Just down Edlington,” Graham said. “Ten minutes away. It was Yorkshire Main Colliery, got shut down in the eighties of course, and the pit top was demolished, but my mate Gary showed me another way in a coupla years ago and we went exploring.” He shot a look over his shoulder at Ryan. “Me, Gary and your nan,” he said. “She loved this sort of thing.”

“Local history,” Ryan said with a sad smile. “Right up her alley.”

“Anyway,” Graham said. “I remember the way in and I reckon our golden friend will have a right laugh down there.”

“Sounds good,” Yaz said, resting her head back on the seat and huffing out a tired breath. The Doctor ran her hand over her arm in reassurance.

“Almost there,” she murmured.

Graham drove them past a giant steel wheel planted in the ground, and round the back of the colliery. He brought them to a stop and they all clambered out of the car, making their way to the entrance to the mine, staring down into its depths.

“Right,” the Doctor said. “Let’s get it down there then.”

With another great team effort, they hauled the dragon off the top of the car. The Doctor winced. It had dented the roof.

Jack caught her eye. “The vicar lied about grave robbing for a year,” he said. “He’ll cope.”

They carried the beast into the mine, settling it far enough in that no one would hear it roar, and it curled up to snooze, another fiery breath puffing out of its nose. The Doctor ran her hand over its forehead one last time, pulling away her lingering influence, leaving it in a natural slumber.

“You know what this means?” Yaz said as they were leaving. “If this thing has been circling Doncaster underground for over a year… there’s a ton of unsupported tunnels beneath the town just ready to collapse. They’ll all have to be filled in. It could be really dangerous.”

Jack waved her hand at her. “That’s what the Council’s for, surely.”

Yaz snorted. “Ha. The Council won’t do shit.”

*

Graham drove them back to the church to return the vicar’s car, to tell him what had happened, and to leave their violent quest behind them. 

“We’ll have to deal with that woman’s body,” Ryan said in a thick voice, as they walked into the church for a third time.

“We can call the actual police for that, right Doc?” Graham asked.

“Oi,” Yaz said. “I’m actual police.”

“I know, love,” he said, “but do you really want to pull a shift now? After the day we’ve had?”

“No,” she admitted.

“We’ll get the vicar to call the police,” the Doctor said, “and they can go down and investigate that cavern. It’ll be the find of the century for them – dragon bones, Romans, loads of cool rocks.”

Jack grinned at her. “One of those is less exciting than the others.”

“Romans are exciting!” she protested.

Ryan pulled the Doctor aside as the others found the vicar, a sorrowful look on his face. 

“I’m sorry about earlier,” he said, and his head hung heavy on his neck and his mouth pulled down at the edges. “I wanted to make it fit into the story, turn that woman into a princess, be the hero that slayed the dragon.” He swallowed. “But life’s not like that, right? I just came off as a bit of a prick.”

The Doctor pulled him into a hug and rested her head on his shoulder. “You’re not a prick, Ryan,” she said in a quiet voice, “for wanting real life to be like legend. Yeah, sometimes stories are just stories, and just because you find yourself treading down that path doesn’t mean you have to read the lines that are written for you.” She pulled away. “I don’t think you would have ever wanted to slay that creature, no matter what it had done. You’re too good.”

He looked at her, mortified. “No, I’m not,” he started, but she cut him off.

“You are,” she said. “You wanted to be a hero. There’s nothing wrong with that. And you _were._ ” She smiled. “We saved that creature today. That’s a good thing.”

“I guess I’m just…” he wavered a hand. “Worn out, I guess, ’cause we always seem to be too late, someone always dies.”

The Doctor inclined her head. “I know. We can’t bring back what it took. But take comfort in the fact that the people of the future are safe because of what we did today. And the wondrous thing about life is that you can keep living, reinventing yourself, redefining yourself. We can all change, and that’s okay. We can decide not to follow the script that’s been written for us.”

He nodded at her, and she hugged him again. “Come on then,” she said, and they walked over to the others.

“You’ll be safe now,” Jack was saying.

“All the people that we already lost…” the vicar said, wringing his hands together.

“They were dead already,” Jack said. “And that’s not to say that you shouldn’t mourn them. But your people are safe, your church is safe.”

“And tell that curate to stop maunging about in the crypt,” Yaz said.

He nodded. “Go with grace,” he said, and turned away from them.

“Right,” the Doctor said, “Back to the bus station with us then. Yaz – I hope your dad’s alright with us being late.” 

“Eh he’s used to it.”

“He still cooking?” Ryan asked.

“He’ll have a full feast out by now,” she said, rolling her eyes.

“Excellent,” Ryan said, and they turned towards the door. 

The Doctor turned to smile at them all. “Well, that’s another brilliant adventure for the annals. The dragon of Doncaster!” she exclaimed triumphantly, slapping her hands together. She scrunched her face up. “Sounds a bit naff, dun’t it?”

“Decidedly so,” Jack told her, and they walked out of the door into the night. 

As they left, Graham groaned and stopped. “Oh God,” he said.

“What?” the Doctor asked, turning her head.

He pointed at the sign on the front door. “Bloody look at it. What are the chances?”

“Oh wow,” Yaz said, peering at it. “What’s that, fate?”

Ryan frowned. “Coincidence.”

“Nominative determinism,” Jack said.

The Doctor just let a laugh bubble out of her chest, feeling like she’d been holding it in for centuries.

 **_St George’s Minster_** , it said. **_All welcome_**.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) Romans: This is so cool! During excavations in the 70s, remains of a Roman shield (called the Danum shield) were found near the church. There’s less than ten of them that have been discovered EVER, so it’s a really important find, and I wanted to include some Romans and their shields in this story because of it. Would they have completely burnt up given the strength of the dragon’s fire? Yes. Did I include them anyway? Yes.  
> 2) The painting: THIS IS THE IMAGE THAT'S BEEN BURNED INTO MY BRAIN THE WHOLE TIME. I had to paint it so you'd all have it too!  
> 3) [Yorkshire Main Colliery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yorkshire_Main_Colliery): I've never been. I've tried to make all the locations in this fic as true to life as possible, except for this one - they definitely don't have a back entrance you can sneak into.  
> 4) Also, would it blow up if you stuck a dragon down there? Probably. But I think sometimes you put a dragon in a coal mine and it's fine.  
> 5) The ending. I _swear_ on my life that I didn't remember the church was called St George's Minster till I'd already plotted out the whole fic. I swear down. My flatmate will attest, I was researching locations and I screamed when I found out. It was like GOD HERSELF was smiling down on me and wanted me to write this.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Your comments and kudos are much appreciated.
> 
> You can find me on tumblr at [petercapaldish](http://petercapaldish.tumblr.com/), if you like.


End file.
